


memoir

by zhuzhubi



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Bullying, Character Death, Dark, Depression, Drug Addiction, Gen, Guns, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Past Child Abuse, Prison, Sexual Assault, Substance Abuse, Suicide, allusions to sex, just very bleak overall, mentions of bodily fluids, spencer is unable to talk about his feelings and it doesnt end well, undiagnosed mental illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:27:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29277681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhuzhubi/pseuds/zhuzhubi
Summary: an account of all the things spencer reid doesn’t want to remember(or, life pushes and pushes until spencer is well past his breaking point)
Relationships: Past Maeve Donovan/Spencer Reid - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	memoir

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr @zhuzhubii

The thing about Dr. Reid is that he’s really good at remembering.

The thing about Spencer is that, despite his seemingly in-human memory, he’s just a normal person. He’s not infallible. He doesn’t remember everything - his hippocampus is far above average in its ability to commit life events to long term memory, but still is not perfect in function. He forgets things. 

He wants to forget things. He wishes he was better at forgetting things because despite the fact that he does indeed have an imperfect memory, he never forgets the things he really wants to. He’s perfectly human in that sense - he’s just like everyone else, though perhaps somewhat less susceptible to the factors that often distort recall.

He never forgets the scary things, the times he’s been afraid and no one has come to rescue him and then when he finally manages to save himself everything only gets worse. When he gets home and everything is just as scary and just as overwhelming. When he gets home and his mom doesn’t realize he was gone, when everyone expects him to be fine too quickly, when his friends ignore his cries for help and leave him in the water without a rope.

It makes sense though, he tells himself. It’s a survival mechanism, the product of thousands of years of evolution - our brains tell us to stay away from the things that have hurt us before, they make us panic so that we won’t want to repeat those things that might get us killed. They try to keep us safe, to keep us alive long enough to reproduce and raise progeny so that our genetic code might be passed on. Our brains love us, in that sense - they want us to stay alive.

It doesn’t work the same way in the modern world, the world with technology that’s evolved too fast for those same brains to keep up. Our world that’s filled with quick fixes, with temptation, with promises of not being in pain anymore, of not being _afraid_ anymore. With promises of purified pleasure available in doses our ancestors could never have even hoped for, could never have even had dreams of.

Spencer dreams about the opium poppy. He dreams of delicate petals, of round bulbs oozing the thick sap that can be distilled into sweet sweet morphine. He dreams about holding it in his hands, about the catalytic hydrogenation reaction that will turn it into hydromorphone. He dreams about how they differ by only a single functional group, about how morphine and Dilaudid are structural isomers different only by the presence of either an alcohol or a ketone. 

He dreams about how opioids mimic dopamine in the brain, about how constantly flooding his system with false endorphins is decreasing the number of receptors in his body. He dreams about finally, _finally_ managing to take a shit, because he pushes and pushes and nothing comes out anymore.

Maybe it should scare him that he’s altering his brain chemistry - his _body_ chemistry - so severely, but it doesn’t. Or it does, but he’s too high to care all that much. He’s too dependent to think about anything but how long it’s been since he took a hit, how much he has hidden away in his bag, how much money is left in his wallet. When he’ll next be able to score.

He’s too afraid to think about anything but running away from Tobias.

 _Homo sapiens sapiens_ can run for a long time without stopping to rest, but not forever. Spencer knows that just as well as anyone, he knows that it’ll all catch up to him eventually. That one day he’ll have to either face what happened to him or -

 _That’s a problem for the future_ , Spencer thinks, _I can’t deal with it now_. And so he keeps running. He watches his ~~father leave again~~ mentor leave for his own mental health, and takes it as a sign that he needs to clean up. Withdrawal is hells, but he tells himself that he’s been through worse. That he deserves to be writhing in pain and shitting his pants and vomiting all over himself. He took the drugs of his own volition, after all. 

… 

Spencer dreams of kids getting blown to pieces with a stolen shotgun. He dreams of bullies tying a little child to a goalpost and spitting on his naked form, of finally working his way free hours later and dragging himself home. He dreams of a mother with nothing in her eyes, of a mother who hits when she’s confused and shouts at ghosts all the time. 

Spencer dreams of a body with three men inside. Of a revolver going _click click click_ against his bloodstained forehead and staring down the barrel with unfocused eyes. Of being force-fed stolen meat, of finally pissing himself when the urgency grows too dire and he just can’t wait any longer. He wakes up and washes his face with his hands because he still can’t stand the feeling of wet fabric against his skin, makes himself sit on the toilet afterwards because he’s so afraid of his body betraying him a second time.

When he crawls back into bed and falls asleep once again, he dreams of a boy who never had a chance. Of a boy with hair to his shoulders whose father didn’t like him and whose mother was gone. He dreams of facing down an assault rifle and saving the boy, of saving himself from the monsters of everyday life. 

Spencer dreams of the opium poppy, of the thick sap running down the unripe bulbs, running over his wanting hands as he funnels the liquid into his mouth. He wants it so, _so_ badly. It’s all he can think about. But he placates himself with rocking and scratching and hair-pulling instead because he’s afraid his friends won’t want him anymore if he gives in to what he’s really craving for.

… 

Maeve is perhaps the first good thing in Spencer’s life, a welcome reprieve after all the splitting headaches and betrayals the past two years have given him. Her voice is like honey over the phone, so sweet that he’s willing to jump through every hoop just for a taste of her. She’s alluring and mysterious, syrupy and warm - he never wants to stop talking to her, never wants to stop hearing her voice. 

He loves her, he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. 

He finds himself fantasizing about her - about her mind, yes, about finally meeting her in person, but also about her body. About giving in to the basal human desires he sometimes feels ashamed of having. But Maeve…Maeve welcomes it, _encourages_ it even. She tells him about her own desires in clandestine moments at the phone booth, and Spencer feels his cheeks flush not from embarrassment but from how much he wants her. From the rush of standing in public and speaking about things that happen in the bedroom.

She tells him what they’ll do when they can finally be together and he laps it up like water in the desert, feels his pupils dilate and his pants tighten as she asks him if he wants that too. And he does, oh how he does. And so he tells her. 

He’d like to feel her skin hot against his in the throes of passion, to feel her shudder with pleasure beneath him. He’d like to try everything she’s imagined twice over, to grow familiar with her hands and her mouth and her _warmth_. One day he shyly admits that he’d like to one day put a baby inside of her, that he’d like to run his hands along her belly and feel little thumps of movement coming from inside. That his desires stretch far beyond purely sexual - that he wants to build a home with her, that he wants to fill it with children and read them to sleep every night.

It’s the first time he’s seriously thought about having children, and it amazes him. It amazes him that a single person could make him this enthusiastic about life, about having a future. He feels warm and fuzzy - all the classic, unexplainable feelings that come with being in love, with having someone to come home to at night.

So it’s only logical that it all gets taken away from him. It’s only logical that he never gets to tell her. It’s only logical that she gets shot right in front of him, that he never even gets to hold her hand while she’s alive. It only makes sense. He should have expected it, because good things never last for Spencer Reid. 

He’s achieving nothing by searching for solace in a trashed apartment. He’s only hurting himself by longing for anything more.

… 

Spencer wakes up in Mexico and watches a judge deny him freedom.

But even then, everything is hazy until intake. Until he’s being dragged off of a bus with chains around his wrists and waist and ankles, herded into a gray place with guard towers and barbed wire. Until he’s being forced to strip naked, to bend over while a stranger with a gun examines his rectum. 

It hits him then. The overwhelming feeling of _I’m not getting out of this, am I?_ And Spencer can feel himself start to panic, but he can’t. He knows that he can’t, that seeming weak is practically a death sentence, that it’ll make him even more of a target than he already is. So he forces down the panic and puts on a brave face just like he always does. Doesn’t flinch under the cold shower he’s pushed into afterwards - instead, he fills himself with nothingness. Tells himself _I’m not afraid_ until it feels like it’s the truth.

That’s a lie. It never even _begins_ to feel like the truth. 

He’s afraid they’ll find out he’s a federal agent. He’s afraid of being shanked. He’s afraid the CO’s will take his food away in the mess hall. He’s afraid when he gets beaten, he’s afraid when he holds his dying friend in his arms and screams for help that never comes.

He’s afraid that his team will never get him out.

He’s afraid that they _will_ get him out, but that he won’t be himself afterwards.

He’s afraid of not having anything valuable to offer. He’s afraid of the way he looks, of his slight form and baby face and -

They finally corner him on the way to the showers, tear his clothes off right there in the hall as Spencer looks up and makes eye contact with the fluorescent lights. Dread floods his veins for a heartbeat before it gets replaced by that familiar, welcome nothingness - he leaves his body as someone pulls his asscheeks apart and enters it, lets himself float away and watches the pretty afterimages dance across his retinas. 

Spencer hears whines of pain, the sickening sound of skin on skin. Snarled insults, the self-satisfied laughs that come with the high of dominance, not sexual pleasure. He feels bad for the poor guy who’s getting violated like that, and regrets deeply that there’s nothing he can do to stop it. He wonders fleetingly if trying to call for a CO would help, but then realizes with a defeated sigh that it wouldn’t - there are security cameras in the hall that undoubtedly caught the inmate getting ganged up on, even if they can’t quite get a visual on this alcove. They’ll drag their feet because they don’t like the inmate, and by the time anyone comes it’ll be too late. It won’t matter anymore.

There won’t even be a report because the lowly criminal probably deserves it anyway and isn’t worth the trouble. The unfortunate man won’t even be able to tell anyone afterwards because it’s a sign of weakness to the other prisoners, because no one would ever believe an inmate over a correctional officer -

_Why didn’t you fight back, Spencer? You need to man up - the bullies aren’t ever going to leave you alone unless you can stand up for yourself._

\- Spencer closes his eyes and imagines going home to his apartment, imagines curling up in bed with his mother and talking about Bob Dylan and tightropes and Geoffrey Chaucer. After all, there’s nothing he can do but occupy himself with dreams of a better life as he waits for it to be over.

…

Some amount of time after leaving prison, Spencer wakes to find his mother cold and still. He feels nothing at first. He texts the nurse and tells her that they won’t be needing her services any longer, then calls for a legal pronouncement of death and retrieval of a body. He gets up and unlocks the door. He makes himself a coffee because he doesn’t know what else to do.

Spencer is halfway through the cup when a thought hits him -

_I wonder what Mom wants to wear today_

\- He runs for the bedroom and sees his mother, his beautiful mother, the mother he’s spent his entire life caring for. If he squints his eyes he can almost imagine the flush of life returning to her cheeks, the steady rise and fall of her chest - he crawls into bed with her and curls his arms around her lifeless form, delicately running his fingers through her hair and thumbing over her cheeks. 

If he closes his eyes he can almost imagine her waking up and wrapping her long arms around his body, he can almost hear her mumbling _You’re too thin, Spencer, you drink too much coffee._ He can almost hear her reading to him like she used to when he was small enough to fit in her lap, to be cradled in her arms. And so that’s what he does - he closes his eyes and hugs her and pretends that he doesn’t have to worry about not being able to hold her anymore.

The mortician finds him like that when she finally comes, huddled over his dead mother and weeping like someone who only knows loss. She lets him have his time, his moment to memorize her features, and then coaxes him away from the body. She does it gently, like someone who’s done this too many times before. 

Spencer’s the only one at the funeral. Not because Diana wasn’t well-loved, but because he doesn’t tell anyone that she’s passed on. Because it would feel like an invasion, almost, to have someone else be there - like someone was intruding on his and his mother’s perfect world. 

Because he doesn’t want anyone to watch him break. To watch him die with her, to watch the fight drain out of him as he presses a soft kiss to her headstone.

… 

Spencer Reid is forty years old and he still doesn’t know how to confide in someone. 

He loves to speak, but he’s always been a listener. Someone who exists on the sidelines, soaking up information when you think he isn’t paying attention, a sounding board for thoughts, a priest in the confessional. People find him easy to talk to, he’s discovered.

(When he really lets himself think about it, Spencer laughs at this discovery. _Isn’t it funny?_ he thinks, _Isn’t it just hilarious? They’ll talk to me all day if I let them, but as soon as I open my mouth they roll their eyes, they tell me to shut up because nobody wants to listen_ )

For all his listening, he can’t quite figure out how to speak about himself. He can’t quite figure out how to trust someone else with his secrets, with his emotions, with his doubts and fears and insecurities. He can’t quite get over the nagging doubt, the feeling that they don’t actually want to listen to him, that they only keep him around because he can spit out facts and calculate geographic profiles and read 333.33 words per second. 

He’s afraid that one day he’ll talk too much and they’ll decide that actually they don’t like him very much, that the pros no longer outweigh the cons, that he’s too much of a bother. That if he tells them about how he really feels, they’ll think he’s too much work, he needs too much help, he’s too much of a downer to be around.

These are the types of things he’s supposed to tell his therapist. But he just can’t make himself do it - he can’t stop thinking about how he’s paying her to be there, about how he’s so unneeded and unliked and unwanted that he has to _pay_ someone just to listen to him. And so he’s never talked about anything more than superficial, has never talked about anything more than he has to. 

He’s never told any of them about the bullying, about the intense feelings of abandonment, about his fear of following in his mother’s footsteps especially now that she’s gone. He’s never mentioned being raped, or poisoning anyone, or choking Cat Adams up against a cold cement wall. He’s never talked about how he still sometimes can’t trust JJ after she lied to him all those years ago.

He’s never talked about finding escape in drugs. He’s never said anything about how ashamed he is of needing help, how ashamed he is of it all.

He spoke about prison a little bit at one point, but only in the vaguest sense and only during those six weeks immediately afterwards. He said the bare minimum that would satisfy the bureau-mandated therapist on the sofa across from him, jotting down notes on a clipboard and deciding whether or not prison made SSA Reid too fucked in the head to keep chasing killers. His new non-bureau-affiliated therapist doesn’t even know that he’s an ex-con. 

Spencer wonders if she thinks he’s wasting her time, because he can tell that _she_ can tell that he’s barely telling her anything meaningful at all. He wonders if she knows how much he’s struggling, even though he never says it out loud. He wonders if she thinks he’s beyond helping, if she thinks he’s too damaged to ever be happy, to ever be able to properly engage with the world.

Spencer thinks so. He thinks that he barely feels anything anymore, that he can barely force himself to get up in the morning and _care_ about anything anymore. But he doesn’t tell her that because he doesn’t know how to say it. He never learned how to ask for help, and he sure as hell isn’t learning now. And besides - he’s afraid of what she would do if she found out. Of being medicated or, god forbid, forced into a hospital.

So he’ll keep it to himself. He won’t tell her - he won’t tell anyone. 

_It doesn’t matter anyway_ , he thinks, _it’s not like they could help._

… 

It ends like this:

Spencer’s never liked football, but he decides to spend his Sunday watching the Super Bowl. He pours himself a glass of brandy and recites Star Trek quotes. He imagines his life going a little differently, imagines all the things he could’ve had if only the team had never gotten that call from Georgia. 

Spencer closes his eyes and hears little footsteps running around his apartment, little voices giggling and shrieking and full of childish excitement. Someone whispers _I love you_ into his ear in a voice just barely audible but sweet like honey, soft like velvet. He smiles and mouths _I love you_ back, turns his head to lean into their warmth, to breathe in the scent of their hair and feel the heat of their cheeks and press his lips -

The empty air blinks back at him, cold and unforgiving in his empty apartment. Spencer would sigh, but he doesn’t have it in him anymore. Instead, he turns back to the television and sips his brandy, puts on a movie after the game is over and waits for what he knows is coming.

When Tobias taps on his shoulder, Spencer is surprised to find that he isn’t afraid anymore. “I’m tired” he confesses to the ghost, a knot tight in his stomach as he waits for the response, still not knowing what reply he’s wanting after.

Tobias nods and says, “I know,” with a sad smile and a voice that tastes like peaches. The knot disappears and Spencer lets out a sigh - not one of disappointment, but of the greatest relief he’s ever felt in his life. It’s not until this very moment that he realizes how much he’s been just barely holding on, how exhausted he’s become after struggling against the tide for so long. How his ending was decided long ago.

“You’ve been fighting for a long time,” Tobias whispers, extending a hand towards Spencer, “But it’s okay, you can rest now. You don’t have to run anymore.”

Spencer barely hesitates before taking it, letting Tobias pull him to his feet and lead him away into the bedroom. He sets out all the things he knows he’ll need before taking one last lap around the apartment he’s called home since he was just twenty-two years old. He runs his fingers over the walls, smiles at his bookcases, opens _The Narrative of John Smith_ and presses a kiss to the handwritten quote inside before delicately returning it to its place on the shelf. He tidies up his desk and opens the curtains - he’s afraid of the dark, after all.

When he’s finished, Spencer returns to the bedroom. He settles himself in the chair next to the bed and closes his eyes, remembers watching over his mother from this position. Remembers binding her wrist to his so that he’d know if she woke up, so that he could be there for her and comfort her, even if she didn’t know who he was. 

Spencer opens his eyes slowly, smiling when he sees his mother in front of him. Her eyes are gentle and soft, filled with love and recognition - just like that all of the bad memories are gone. He sees a rose-tinted version of who Diana was in life, the brilliant professor who loved literature, who nursed his scrapes and bruises and always cherished her son -

“Read me to sleep?” he asks as he runs a finger over the revolver on the table next to him.

“Of course, my baby boy” she smiles and then the words begin to pour out of her mouth -

_Little son, I have longed a while to see you_

\- Spencer picks up the syringe first, turning it over in his hands for a moment as his mother’s voice washes over him -

_And now I see you the fairest thing ever a woman bore_

\- He draws back his dose, flicks out the air and brings it up to his arm. The prick of the needle is nothing compared to a lifetime of hurting and so it does not phase Spencer at all -

_In sadness came I hither, in sadness did I bring forth_

\- His sense of calmness deepens as his heart pumps the chemical through his veins, not enough to kill but just enough to make him float away. To take the edge off -

_And in sadness has your first feast day gone_

\- He takes one last moment to relish in the feeling, the warmth of the drug dulling the unpleasantries of life, taking away the last dregs of fear as he feels the gun cold in his palm -

_And as by sadness you came into the world_

\- Spencer feels his mother’s arms wrap around him as he runs the barrel over his lips, eyes closed as he leans into her, so relieved that soon -

_Your name shall be called… Spencer; that is the child of sadness_

\- very soon, he’ll be with her and he won’t have to be in pain anymore -

_After she had said these words she kissed him_

\- The gun is metallic against his tongue. It’s steely and cold and unforgiving, yet his finger doesn’t waver against the trigger. He gives the barrel a spin for old time’s sake even though there are six bullets in the chamber and he doesn’t need God’s Will to save him. Spencer thumbs off the safety and -

_And immediately when she kissed him, she died._

**Author's Note:**

> diana reads spencer a quote from 'the romance of tristan and iseult,' and the actual name of the child of sadness is tristan, not spencer


End file.
